Recent years, various kinds of batteries such as car batteries, solar batteries, and electronic-equipment batteries employ stacked cells. The stacked cell is formed by shaping a positive electrode, a negative electrode (hereinafter, the positive or negative electrode is sometimes referred to as an electrode), and a separator into sheets and by stacking them in order of the positive electrode, separator, negative electrode, and separator.
For manufacturing such stacked cells, various apparatuses have been proposed, for example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007-329111 (Patent Literature 1).
The apparatus described in the Patent Literature 1 arranges a bearer and a presser plate so that they vertically face each other. In a state that the bearer and presser plate are stopped moving in a conveying direction, each of the bearer and presser plate draws and holds a separator. On the separator drawn to the lower bearer, a positive electrode is placed. Thereafter, the upper presser plate is lowered to put the separator drawn to the presser plate onto the positive electrode. In this state, edges of the separators that overlap each other around the positive electrode are thermally bonded to each other, thereby forming a packaged positive electrode in which the positive electrode is held between the separators bonded like a bag. The bearer, presser plate, and packaged positive electrode held between them are conveyed. The packaged positive electrode is taken out from between the bearer and the presser plate. The packaged positive electrode and a negative electrode are stacked on each other to form a cell element in which the positive electrode, separator, negative electrode, and separator are stacked in this order.